Rhon­dor Dowlat

Op­er­a­tions at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre (FSC) were stalled for sev­en hours yes­ter­day as no pathol­o­gist showed up for work.

Last-minute arrange­ments had to be made by FSC of­fi­cials to "fly-in" pathol­o­gist Dr Hughvon Des Vi­gnes from To­ba­go to con­duct au­top­sies on about sev­en bod­ies–vic­tims of mur­der and homi­cides–that oc­curred over the week­end.

The hours of wait were some­times dif­fi­cult to bear and some rel­a­tives were heard shout­ing for some kind of in­ter­ven­tion and ac­tion by the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties.

One rel­a­tive shout­ed: "Al­lyuh doh care about we the poor man out here at all."

"This is non­sense and dis­re­spect­ful for us to go through this ear­ly on a Mon­day morn­ing. Noth­ing al­lyuh can't tell we," an­oth­er shout­ed.

For­mer Head of the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre (NOC), Garvin Heer­ah, whose rel­a­tive, Cyn­thia Matthews was killed on Sat­ur­day, was among rel­a­tives of crime vic­tims, to iden­ti­fy the body and wit­ness the au­top­sy.

He said what he wit­nessed yes­ter­day was "very dis­tress­ing and dis­ap­point­ing." He said cit­i­zens of T&T were at a break­ing point and the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties had to be very care­ful as to how to treat with is­sues es­pe­cial­ly when deal­ing with the emo­tions of peo­ple.

"Re­spect must be giv­en to peo­ple es­pe­cial­ly those in sit­u­a­tions like this where their loved ones were killed. These fam­i­lies are al­ready deal­ing with emo­tion­al stress dis­or­der and for them to come here (FSC) and be treat­ed like this is un­fair," Heer­ah said.

The treat­ment met­ed out to the fam­i­lies yes­ter­day, Heer­ah said, showed a dis­tinct break­down with re­gard to strate­gic plan­ning, de­ci­sion mak­ing and con­tin­gency plan­ning.

"This af­fects not on­ly the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty but the en­vi­ron­ment," Heer­ah said.

He ad­vised that the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties "start putting to­geth­er a con­tin­gency plan be­cause every­body is talk­ing about the in­crease in the crime sit­u­a­tion, homi­cides and the rat­ings have got­ten out of hand. We have to look at the key agen­cies in the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry and in­clude ef­fi­cien­cy."

Oth­er rel­a­tives at the FSC al­so com­plained about an aw­ful stench com­ing from the mor­tu­ary. This was due to the mal­func­tion­ing of the re­frig­er­a­tion sys­tem, the T&T Guardian learned.

In re­la­tion to this is­sue, Heer­ah said there need­ed to be a metic­u­lous re­view of the in­stal­la­tion of equip­ment at the FSC. He said that giv­en the fact that the en­vi­ron­ment had changed and homi­cides in­creased there need­ed to be ad­di­tion­al foren­sic cen­tres in Cen­tral and South Trinidad and al­so in To­ba­go.

"There is need to mod­ernise, mod­i­fy and ex­pand to treat with the en­vi­ron­ment. It has changed in­cre­men­tal­ly and we need to make in­cre­men­tal changes to work in such an en­vi­ron­ment," Heer­ah said.